UD Central Exchange: Best Practices

Off-campus IMAP access to email:
When using an IMAP client to access Exchange email from off campus,
you must connect to the UD VPN service prior to logging in
to your Exchange account. (VPN
Directions)

Schedule end dates for your recurring meetings no more than one year out. (In reality, issues arise if more than 300 occurrences are scheduled.) Scheduling a perpetual appointment may cause items to become out of sync when they are edited.

Do not edit recurring meetings. If you need to make a change, delete the individual occurrence and create a new appointment. If an existing recurring item is edited and given an end date, any edits that have occurred on individual events will be lost.

Do not move (drag and drop) calendar items; doing so can cause corruption issues.

Run the latest version of Outlook on the same platform (either Mac or PC) on all computers that access your Exchange account.

Make sure your computer and all mobile devices are patched and up to date.

Multiple device access:

Do not process or edit meeting requests on your smartphone or mobile device unless they were created there.

Do not use your smartphone or mobile device (iPhones, iPads, and Android devices, etc.) to modify meetings. This is especially important when working with recurring items.

Minimize access:

Delegates: Attempt to limit delegates to one primary delegate if possible, with an alternate delegate in case the primary is absent. Failure to do so may result in conflicts. If someone needs to see your calendar, don't add them as a calendar delegate, instead grant them only View access to your calendar.

Use the principle of "least access"--grant others the lowest level of permissions required for your Outlook calendar.

Remove unneeded shared calendars:

If you have access to someone's calendar and no longer need it, remove it from your calendar listing.

If you have granted access to your calendar to a person who no longer needs it, remove that permission.

Manage your mailbox/calendar size:

Keep your inbox, calendar, tasks, contacts, and sent mail to under 5,000 items each. This INCLUDES any subfolders. Doing so will keep them from constantly synchronizing with the server.

Delete unneeded email, including the email in your inbox and your sent mail.

Archive older mail to a .pst file and store it on your computer. After archiving, items can be accessed by opening the .pst file.

Note: best practice is to back up .pst files to a network share. If doing so, you may need to archive it into a .zip file as some network systems will not allow storage of .pst files.

Do NOT access .pst files that are stored on network shares. Use the network shares as a backup location only. Accessing files from network shares could lead to Outlook hanging.